Week 2 Reflection

This past week we really got into some good discussions concerning what social media is and also where it came from. I really liked learning about the history of the network. It turns out, the web is something on top of the internet, they are not the same thing. It is always awesome when you realize these kind of things. We were reading "25 Things You may Not Know About the Web on its 25th Birthday" (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/09/25-years-web-tim-berners-lee). One of the points our group (#1) had to present to the class included the point that the internet is different than the web. I really wanted to know more than what the article's short paragraph told us, so I decided to conduct a Google search. The most helpful site I found (http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/Web_vs_Internet.asp) said:

What is The Internet?
The Internet is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols.

What is The Web (World Wide Web)?
The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the Internet, to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the the Web to share information. The Web also utilizesbrowsers, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, to access Web documents called Web pages that are linked to each other via hyperlinks. Web documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video.

The Web is just one of the ways that information can be disseminated over the Internet. The Internet, not the Web, is also used for e-mail, which relies on SMTP, Usenet news groups, instant messaging and FTP. So the Web is just a portion of the Internet, albeit a large portion, but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused.
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I found this to be very helpful in learning the difference between the internet and the Web. The "25 Things" article also talked about the idea of the web being free for everyone. How is it that the web can be free and yet there are organizations making billions of dollars from it? Is this moral? Should Facebook and the like be forced to allow everyone free editing just like the traditional Web allows?